Spiritual teachings by Shunyamurti, the founder and director of the Sat Yoga Institute - a wisdom school, ashram and the home of a vibrant spiritual community based in Costa Rica.

Archive for July 2014

Excerpt: “[The Sat Yoga School] has three basic intentions. One is to help you think the unthinkable. The second is to help you bear the unbearable. And the third is to help you dare the impossible. So let’s take these one at a time. Obviously most people don’t want to think the unthinkable, and there are different levels of un-think-ability. And the first level is really more the resistance to coming out of denial. It’s not that it’s really unthinkable, but “I don’t want to think about it” – it’s that level. And that has to do basically with prudence. Any prudent business person will have fallback positions in case of worst case scenarios. . . . Well, most people do not want to think about the fact that this entire system is about to collapse; that’s too much to deal with. . . . If you want a plan B, and if you want to think your way through this and to survive, then it’s worth thinking about this before it happens. . .” Recorded on the evening of Saturday, July 26, 2014.

Excerpt: ”Our teacher Sri Ramana says that the ego has four pillars. . . . And when we understand the pillars of the ego, because they are all delusional, it is easy to bring them down. And the four are co-dependent on one another. In developmental terms the first is Avidya, or ignorance; forgetfulness of our True Nature. And that forgetfulness makes us vulnerable to false beliefs to buying into preconceptions and impositions and false implications of language, and the belief, that what you see is what you get. And the belief in the implicit reality that there must be some thing that stands behind the appearance of the I-thought.” Recorded on the morning of Thursday, July 17, 2014.

Excerpt: ”. . .But there’s no reason ever to leave the stillness of the perfection of what you are; that is already liberated from maya. You don’t notice that you simply create maya in order to then liberate yourself from it. It’s a nice game, but this “Yo" "Yo” game that you play just brings you back to square zero anyway – so why ever leave it? Recorded in the afternoon of Tuesday, May 21, 2013.

Excerpt: “. . . And it’s only when you have entered deeply upon a path of Self discovery that you can even know what are the potentials that lie behind and beyond the event horizon of your current level of subjectivity – that offer miraculous powers and potencies for your own capacity to become and to realize yourself in this plane as the Infinite Being that you are. It is only when we constrain the ego mind and its weaknesses from acting out; its desire to regress, to take the easy path, the comfort zone, and never to dare those levels of your selfhood that are currently not yet known to you – because you are a mystery to yourself. But few of us explore that mystery. Most of us settle for an identity that we received from others that might just be adequate enough to make us a living, and to live a tolerable life, but never to know true ecstatic joy, bliss, and infinite fulfillment.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, July 3, 2014.

Excerpt: ”The ego is an unstable structure – and dependent upon the desire of others, the affirmation of others; what one takes as the love of others – but which is all always, at the level of ego, an narcissistic quid pro quo. To get beyond this impasse, we must dis-identify with any objective other, including the body that is considered one’s own. And to abide in silence and stillness, and inner aloneness without any co-dependence on any other, without any desire from any other – in oneness with the Supreme Self. This practice alone can liberate us; liberate consciousness from its suffering. The problem is, for the ego mind, that the Real Self is inconceivable. . .” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, June 26, 2014.